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martes, 7 de mayo de 2013

Opinion: Achtung! Cthulhu

Achtung!
Cthulhu might be the next big thing to happen in the Lovecraftian-gaming world,
at least until Call of Cthulhu’s 7th
Edition comes out one of these years, and it is already here. Achtung! Chtulhu! is Lovecraftian-World
War II setting published by a young British company, MODIPHIUS. I say setting
and not game because so far the two adventures published have appeared for Call of Cthulhu and Realms of Cthulhu (the Savage
Worlds Mythos game) and PDQ
(Prose Descriptive Qualities) system by Atomic Sock Monkey and it is expected
that they will end up appearing for Trail
of Cthulhu and their own game, Expeditions,
that, if I am not mistaken, is based on FATE. This seems a lot of work (and
probably a lot of money going to publishing rights) but it tells me one thing:
those guys really want you to try their setting, regardless of what kind of
player you are.

As I
said before, so far the only two products that are on the market, and as far as
I know, only in PDF, are the first two stories of a three-part campaign: Zero Point, by Sarah Newton (which I
will analyze later). But there is more, a lot more. I know only half the story
but it seems MODIPHIUS went to Kickstarter to fund the printed version of an Investigator’s
Guide and Keeper’s Guide for CoC and Realms…but they had about 20 times more
success than expected. Now there will be an endless list of products: from regional
guides to campaigns, miniatures and crossover with other well-known WWII games
such as Godlike or DUST Tactics (You can find a complete list here). I have
read some legitimate criticism saying that maybe MODIPHIUS has had too much
success and, since there is so much to publish, the quality of those books
might not be what expected. I am sure that of the 8 planned books that are in the
Kickstarter (not counting crossovers) not everything is going to be
Sans-Détour’s-Masks-of-Nyarlathotep quality, but judging from what it is
published, I have some really high expectations. If anything else, such a
success proves that Call of Cthulhu fans were eager to enter WWII (or the other
way around). According to the Keeper’s Companion Vol. 2 there is one Cthulhu
Live adventure that takes place during the war, I know there is the Shadows of
War MULA…and I do not know what else is there. So, thanks to MODIPHIUS for
allowing us to do so.

One
must admit that doing a Mythos game during the war is not an easy task. First,
because I have the impression that if there is one period of history that
interests almost everybody, it is WWII (and if you don’t believe me, go and
check your local bookstore and tell me which other topic is more popular it the
History section). This requires an additional effort from the writer or Keeper
because there is always going to be a player knowing more history than any of
them and that will start saying things like “That is not possible, the first PzKpfw IV F1 weren’t
deployed in the Kursk front until July, 1943, and it is still June 30th." Second, because the war had enough horrors by itself (and all caused by us
humans) that adding cosmic horror might be too much and I am sure there is
going to be a lot of people who would not like to find out that Hitler is an
avatar of Hastur (hence the swastika, ;)) and that Stalin only opposed the
Germans because he was controlled by Cthulhu (don’t you think that Marx hid tentacles under that beard?) 1 and other non-canonical pulp stuff.
Personally, I do not care, for me it is a game and if I have fun playing it
(and if it convinces me to read some real history), that is enough, but I understand
there are people who take things more serious and WWII was a very serious
event. Having said that, I think it gives a world of opportunities to make some
very good stories linked with real events, to know why certain events really happened and to make
investigators feel important (Spoiler
alert): “We know we should be helping everybody moving out from Dunkirk sir,
but if we do not continue our mission, they might not even have a chance to get
into the boats” (End of the spoiler). Sometimes I think investigators seem to
be fighting the Mythos just for fun and there are no real implications in what
they do (maybe because it is better to keep humanity ignorant from those
matters. I think Achtung! Cthulhu has the potential of becoming a great
campaign, not in the Mask’s sense (although I hope that there will be stories
as memorable as this one) but giving as the opportunity to easily link
non-related adventures and see the effects of Investigators failing to do their
job. Say for example that all the investigators die trying to stop the Nazi
byakhee-breeding project, the next story (with all new characters) might take
place in occupied London, since the Germans were able to win the Battle of Britain
with the helps of the winged ones2.

As
you can see, I am pretty exited about this new setting. For a slightly more
objective opinion, please wait for the reviews of the Zero Point campaign.

1
I am making this up, I do not know what is the main plot behind Achtung!
Cthulhu, but I suppose there will be some kind of conspiracy at that level.

2
This is wishful thinking; I do not know what there will be in the books to
come.